The List: 28 Mar 2002 (Issue 437)

When's Easter this year? It's an annual question usually asked around the end of February as people try to plan a family weekend. Well if you keep this site bookmarked you'll have the answer at your fingertips until the year 4099. Now if that’s not thorough I don't know what is.

THE EASTER EGGS SITE

www.eastereggs.com

Well it‘s that time of year again when we can tenuously wheel out this old chestnut. For those who don‘t know. a (digital) egg is a piece of code hidden away in computer programs or DVDS that. when activated by a secret sequence. unlock everything from hidden Splash screen. to whole film shorts. to flight simulators. A lot of major programs and DVDs contain them. so don't overlook them just because you haven't seen one.

SMOKAGOTCHA! www.smokagotcha .co.uk

If you smoke and want to give up but you're alone in this desire. then here yOu can Create a Tamagotchi Style buddy who can chum you along in your quest. You construct the little chap giving him attributes such as inspired or stressed. and he'll keep in touch with you by email. Just as susceptible to lapses as yOu may be. it'S a bit of fun and it might just help you.

SMARTOREDS

www.smartcreds.co.uk

Sometimes an idea comes along that is so inspired everybody needs to know about it. E-commerce is all very well and good as long as you have a credit card. which obviously

excludes a significant percentage of the country. Smartcreds is a scheme whereby you can buy cards at the Post Office (among other places) and use them to top Lip y0ur account to use at selected outlets. Ideal for children etc.

STREET MATTRESS

www.5treetmattress

.COITI

Commonly thought to be one of the most pointless websites out there. but this is never a bad thing. It's photojOurnalism at its weirdest as we delve into the bizarre world of dead abandoned mattresses left out on the streets of North America. The amount of work that has been put into it IS quite unfathomable. and yOu can browse mattresses by cateQOry (‘Mattress de Milo‘. ‘seen worse'). You may be screaming ‘why’?' but this guy is probably a world authority of dead mattresses and I'm glad he lives in a different c0untry from me.

NEW MEDIA SCOTLAND

host.mediascot.org

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I've covered this online contemporary exhibition space a few times before and it never fails to impress. Candy FacIOry is a new installation here and is Lip to the USual standards. '(They) often take as their starting point the cultural forms of globalised capital, whether manifested physically or through electronic media. Their works build a sense of the hyperreal from the lanscape of contemporary culture.‘ Told you it was good. (Steve. Blairl

video@list.co'.uk

THRILLEB ENIGMA (15) 113 mins 0..

Video/DVD .

Paying homage to Hitch’s The 39 Steps

Saving Private Ryan described in graphic detail the Allies’ western front assault during the Second World War; Enemy At The Gates did likewise for the eastern front. But there was another battle fought which had a similarly dramatic effect on the outcome of World War II: the efforts of Britain’s Bletchley Park maths boffins to crack the German Enigma machine code and thus scupper U-Boat attacks on vital Allied shipping in the North Atlantic.

Not easy, you would think, to make number crunching the high dramatic stuff of war films, but, armed with a screenplay by Tom Stoppard adapted from Robert Harris’ bestseller, director Michael Apted has fashioned an occasionally riveting thriller, paying homage to the likes of

Hitchcock’s The 39 Steps.

Dougray Scott takes the lead (his first since cracking fame as Tom Cruise's nemesis in Mission: Impossible 2) as top codebreaker Tom Jericho, who returns to Bletchley Park under a cloud, scandalised by a nervous breakdown following an affair with colleague Claire Romilly (Saffron Burrows). Romilly’s gone missing and secret service agent Wigram (Jeremy Northam, taking the plum role as a sadistic toff) has Jericho at the top of his suspect list.

The bulk of the film, which counterpoises the private investigations of Jericho and Romilly’s plucky pal, Hester (Kate Winlset), with the codebreaking team’s race against time, is well- crafted. Ironically, it’s the extended chase finale which goes off the rails. (Miles Fielder)

DRAMA GEORGE WASHINGTON

(12) 89min 0000.

You wants plot? Go to Hollywood. This American independent feature from first time writer-director David Gordon Green isn't too concerned with plotting. Instead. he paints a portrait of rural Deep SOuth life that's as believable as it is beautiful. The drama might revolve around a death. but the fOCuS is on the lives of kids in backwater America.

At the centre of this rag-bag bunch of pre- and adolescent children is the titular George Washington. a tiny black boy who hangs around with his pals and who wears a motorcycle helmet because he was born With a hole in his

Genuinely scary smalltown horror that manages to combine elements of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Spielberg's early classic Duel. and containing enough dumb dialogue. suspense and shocks to keep yOu watching. DeSpite the Buffy-ish ending. the spooky daylight sequences in the earlier part of the film werk well. Gina Phillips and Justin Long as the brother and sister in the

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heart of a Midwest America nightmare deal with their vacuous exposition with considerable aplomb.

Produced by Francis Ford Coppola. this is a healthy US addition to a growing movement of horror movies that are redefining their own boundaries and led by the Japanese vanguard of the Ring trilogy and Audition. (Helkon VHS rental; DVD rental and retail) (Paul Dale)

Video/ DVD

DRAMA THE NAVIGATORS (15) 97min 0.. Agreeing with a film's politics isn't the same as liking it. Ken Loach's loyal recreation of the period when British Rail became fragmented into a warren of competing companies is. on the one hand. a Significant social dOCLiment and. on the other, a graceless movie. USing real railway workers as well as professional actors. it follows a team of labourers forced to choose between leaving the industry or working at greater risk. It's a stOry that needs to be told. but what yOu gain in authenticity yOu lose in the polish of the performances and the emotive shape of the stonx. tBFl VHS rental and retail) (Mark Fisher)

S.A.S - Are You Tough Enough?

Released: 11 March 2002

A BBC series that puts contestants through the rigours of the SAS initiation. presented by Dermot

O'Leary. American Pie 2

Released: 18 March 2002 The entire cast reunites for this hugely Successful sequel taking 218 million at the box office.